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Although little studied, whining is a vocal pattern that is both familiar and irritating to parents of preschool‐ and early school‐age children. The current study employed multidimensional scaling to identify the crucial acoustic characteristics of whining speech by analysing participants' perceptions of its similarity to other types of speech (question, neutral speech, angry statement, demand, and boasting). We discovered not only that participants find whining speech more annoying than other forms of speech, but that it shares the salient acoustic characteristics found in motherese, namely increased pitch, slowed production, and exaggerated pitch contours. We think that this relationship is not random but may reflect the fact that the two forms of vocalization are the result of a similar accommodation to a universal human auditory sensitivity to the prosody of both forms of speech. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article explores the need for Treaty-based local governance, raised to national prominence by the 2014 outrage against New Plymouth Mayor Andrew Judd, who advocated a Māori ward for 2016. The Treaty of Waitangi influenced the creation of Māori seats in Parliament in the nineteenth century, and a provision for Māori seats in local councils in 2001. There has been limited uptake of the latter and Māori remain significantly underrepresented. Innovations in governing arrangements have allowed non-elected Māori to take up advisory roles and, in some cases, decision-making roles. We argue that these do not ensure fair and effective Māori representation. Ad hoc and unpredictable structures have failed to deliver fair and effective representation to all New Zealanders. There is a pressing need for a New Zealand constitutional debatea conversation among Māori and non-Māorito devise a governance model that addresses the Treaty of Waitangi as New Zealand's founding document.

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This paper explores the diversity of local government electoral candidates and elected members, in Auckland – one of the world's most diverse cities (Chen 2015: 56) – following the 2010 amalgamation. It responds to questions raised over the democratic gaps created by enlarged wards, a lack of diverse representation, and higher elected member ratios. The research asks the question – who stood and who was elected in the election following the Auckland 2010 reforms, and how does this compare with the city's diverse population. Pitkin's (1967) concept of descriptive representation provides the foundation for a comparison of the gender, age, and ethnicity of local population, local government candidates, and elected members, to ascertain descriptive representation. The human rights framework provides a theoretical foundation to examine the diversity of representation. Preliminary findings support the view that under the shared governance model, electoral candidates are becoming more ethnically and gender diverse at the local level; while at the regional level, the dominance of the archetypal councillor as European, middle‐aged and male, prevails.